This invention relates to collapsible music stands incorporating an upper section of a solid, tilting backrest, an adjustable support shaft attached vertically, and a foldable tripod base.
Conventional music stands consist of a solid backrest and shelf with a width of just over two pages to fulfill the transporting and reading requirements of the professional musician. After loading instruments, amplifiers, and speakers, there is little remaining space in ever smaller automobiles for this size of backrest configuration. The alternative is to use a music stand with a wire backrest, but these are flimsy under weight and when outdoors, wind blowing through them causes the pages to fall; an undesirable exchange for the sake of portability.
The backrest, being fixed and limited in width causes endless page turnings and disruptive pauses to the musician and audience alike. A more panoramic view is necessary for conducting as well. During live recordings, these page turnings may be picked up by the microphone and become part of the subsequent recordings. To compensate for the lack of width entails purchasing and transporting multiple music stands, placing them side by side as space allows or buying additional clip on panels, which are less secure and worse yet, may be forgotten entirely, when loading.
One type of collapsible music stand is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 864,066, Berwick, which folds to a sachel form with a handle to carry the music within the transported form. The sachel is placed and opened on a music rack, and the music is held in place by spring plates for the proper tension.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,808,221, Elsbernd, shows a knockdown display structure wherein a plurality of panels are hinged together and provided with interlocking means to hold the panels in open operative edge aligned position and an intermediate leg providing an easel-like structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,866, Baker discloses a portable carrying case which when closed serves to store an attached music stand and when partly open provides a base. It comprises upper and lower boxlike sections hinged together.
In the music stand extender of U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,490, Biasini, a pair of extension members especially adapted to be slidably affixed to the book support member of a music stand of conventional construction is illustrated. The extension panels have provided thereon a plurality of retaining members, defining a retaining groove, sliding onto the music stand.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,605,193, Kuparinen, shows a foldable music stand comprised of a lectern, which includes a backplate and a shelf, a vertical shaft, and a &holding support member, against which backplate a score is placed to rest on the shelf, when the lectern is in operation; the shelf and backplate can be folded against each other when transporting parallel to a movable cross leg to form a platelike flat object.
While all of these function as described, there remains a need for a complete music stand, one with a sturdy, yet collapse backrest, she-f and base that is easily manufactured; and a self-contained means of adjusting the width of the backrest and shelf quickly and easily, indoors or outdoors, as the performance demands.